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You're the new SIE WW Studios President: where SIE Japan Studio should focus now?

Japan Studio should focus on...

  • AAA sequels: Bloodborne, Atro Bot, Demon's Souls, Gravity Rush, Ape Escape, Wild Arms, TLG, SOTC...

    Votes: 11 47.8%
  • Smaller budget sequels: Puppeteer, LocoRoco, Parappa, Echocrome, Patapon, Vib-RIbbon...

    Votes: 7 30.4%
  • AAA new IPs: aiming for a new GOTY contender, 10M+ units sold game to match many other SIE studios

    Votes: 9 39.1%
  • Creative, great, small budget new IPs: It isn't enough with 3rd party indies

    Votes: 8 34.8%
  • Remakes and remasters of classics published by the studio

    Votes: 6 26.1%
  • Game to showcase upcoming new tech: PSVR2's Astro as they did for PS5 and PSVR

    Votes: 1 4.3%
  • Work-for-hire for 3rd party companies like Konami developing non-Sony owned brands like Silent Hill

    Votes: 4 17.4%

  • Total voters
    23

yurinka

Member
As you can see in their Wikipedia page, over time Sony's Japan Studio developed a ton of internal games or published a ton of outsourced games: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Studio

But every generation the AAA become bigger, more detailed and more complex, so they require more time and people to be developed, resulting on most dev teams releasing less games per generation. It also means they become way more expensive, so they require to sell way more to keep it profitable, so to greenlight a game they need to play it safer trying to aim the biggest sales possible cutting a bit the creative side of the games, and at the same time to keep super high quality standars because the AAA competition is huge.

Considering this, should Japan Studio continue trying very creative AAA new IPs that in most cases didn't sell very well? Or should try to make a sequel of some of these best selling ones? Or to keep it even safer, a remaster or remake of some of their classics?

They could also focus on creative, smaller budget games, they released many popular internal or external games. They could release more new IPs or sequels, remasters or remakes of some of these ones. Many time ago it was needed to fill that market, but now there are tons of awesome 3rd party indies covering that area. Should they continue working in this area or to keep it to indies?

They also got critical acclaim to showcase PSVR and PS5 new features and possible mechanics with Astro Bot games, that in addition of being awesome games they are great to sell these products and to give ideas to other devs on how to use them. Sony is working in PSVR2 and said there won't release PS5 VR games in a couple of years, so PSVR will be released in 2 or 3 years from now, so maybe it's a good idea to put them to work on a PSVR2 Astro.

Or what else could they do? To work in non-Sony owned game IPs like Silent Hill as the rumor/'leak' said? Sony neved did this before and Silent Hill never sold very well so I don't see why they would want to work on it specially if they aren't supposed to buy that brand. I don't see Sony as a work-for-hire studio working for Konami.

And well, should they develop all these games internally, externally or a mix of both as the did until now?

Imagine you're the new head of Sony's Worldwide Studios (Herman Hulst) or president of the Japan Studio (Nicolas Doucet). What do you think Japan Studio should do, considering they are running a company and should be profitable?
 

Aion002

Member
Triple A new games.

Give them the budget, put good managers on control and work with amazing creators (like the Suikoden, Castlevania, Breath of Fire and others creators), giving them freedom on which type of game they will work on. Amazing things are bound to be made.

They just gotta believe, have good management and budget.
 

Magog.

Banned
Give the Astro devs a big budget and lots of creative freedom. Let them make whatever game they want.
 

Elios83

Member
We will see a focus on Astrobot that has the potential to become a big mascot series and could be a showcase title for PSVR2.
And they will try to co-develop games through partnerships on big titles (see what they did with From Software and BluePoint).
They won't attempt to do AAA all by themselves because it's too risky.
They won't do smaller niche titles that are bound to sell 100-150k units because that's not how Sony wants to use their resources.
 
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yurinka

Member
We will see a focus on Astrobot that has the potential to become a big mascot series and could be a showcase title for PSVR2.
And they will try to co-develop games through partnerships on big titles (see what they did with From Software and BluePoint).
They won't attempt to do AAA all by themselves because it's too risky.
They won't do smaller niche titles that are bound to sell 100-150k units because that's not how Sony wants to use their resources.
This sounds on point, realistic and with chances of performing on sales and Metacritic better than what they did until now:
-Internal game development focused on Astro as big mascot series + showcasing upcoming hardware like PSVR2
-External game publishing / codevelopment focused on AAA safe bets with devs like From Software (Bloodborn and Demon's Souls sequels?) or BluePoint (Bloodborne remaster? Other remake like Ico?)
-No internal big AAA games to avoid big budget games flopping hard in sales like TLG, GR2, Knack 2, etc
-No small, too creative and niche games to keep it for the 3rd party indies
 
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McCarth

Member
They simply don't have the development or management talent for big, AAA games. Doing so would wind up in disaster, perpetually delayed, underwhelming titles that don't match up to the quality from their companion studios in NA and Europe.

Remakes/remasters and helping 3rd party publishers with co-development is my opinion.
 

Heimdall_Xtreme

Jim Ryan Fanclub's #1 Member
1.- Get Fired Jim Ryan forever.
2.- Return the playstation brand to the Japanese sector
3.- Focus the effort on the sequels of Gravity rush, Bloodborne, puppeter, give more marketing and create a movie or TV miniseries (Sotc will be a movie).
4.- Keiichiro Toyama is the vice president of Japan Studio, give more budget for his IP And add the rebirth of Silent Hill.
5.- Have a game in collaboration with Nintendo.
 
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